The Kremlin denounced Thursday the seizure of the villa of a Russian businessman in the southwest of France. The villa, located on the Basque coast, was seized in December 2023 as part of an investigation into suspicions of aggravated money laundering.
According to the French magazine Challenges, this Art Deco style house belongs to Russian businessman Artur Ocheretny, the new companion of Lyudmila Putin, the ex-wife of Vladimir Putin. No person is currently being prosecuted in this case, underlined the prosecution, recalling that the procedure had been launched following a complaint from the anti-corruption association Transparency International.Since the start of the large-scale attack against Ukraine at the end of February 2022, many Western countries have sanctioned figures deemed close to Russian power and seized some of their property abroad. The investigation must determine in particular whether the funds which made this acquisition possible had a fraudulent origin, the Paris prosecutor's office said on Wednesday.